Classical Mythology

APOLLO 241

APOLLO, CORONIS, AND ASCLEPIUS

Several stories emphasize Apollo's role as a god of medicine, which is taken over
in large part by his son Asclepius. And this brings us to Apollo's affair with
Coronis, the last we shall tell. Coronis (in Ovid's version) was a lovely maiden
from Larissa in Thessaly whom Apollo loved; in fact she was pregnant with his
child. Unfortunately the raven, Apollo's bird, saw Coronis lying with a young
Thessalian and told all to the god (Metamorphoses 2. 600-634):

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When Apollo heard this charge against Coronis, the laurel wreath slipped from

his head, his expression changed, and the color drained from his cheeks. As

his heart burned with swollen rage, he took up his accustomed weapons and

bent his bow to string it; with his unerring arrow he pierced the breast which

he had so often embraced. She gave a groan as she was struck; and when she

drew the shaft from her body, red blood welled up over her white limbs. She

spoke: "You could have exacted this punishment and I have paid with my life,

after I had borne your child; as it is, two of us die in one." With these words

her life drained away with her blood; the chill of death crept over her lifeless

corpse.

Too late, alas, the lover repented of his cruel punishment. He hated himself

because he had listened to the charge against her and had been so inflamed. He

hated his bow and his arrows and his hands that had so rashly shot them. He

fondled her limp body and strove to thwart the Fates; but his efforts came too

late, and he applied his arts of healing to no avail. When he saw that his at-

tempts were in vain and the pyre was being built and saw her limbs about to

be burned in the last flames, then truly (for it is forbidden that the cheeks of the

gods be touched by tears) Apollo uttered groans that issued from the very depths

of his heart, just as when a young cow sees the mallet poised above the right

ear of her suckling calf to shatter the hollow temples with a crashing blow. He

poured perfumes upon her unfeeling breast, clasped her in his embrace, and

performed the proper rites so just and yet unjust. Phoebus could not bear that

his own seed be reduced to the same ashes, but he snatched his son out of the

flames from the womb of his mother and brought him to the cave of the cen-

taur Chiron. The raven, who hoped for a reward for the truth of his utterances,

Apollo forbade evermore to be counted among white birds. Meanwhile, the cen-

taur was happy to have the divine infant as a foster child and delighted in such

an honorable task.

Thus, like many another mythological figure, Asclepius was trained by the
wise and gentle Chiron, and he learned his lessons well, particularly in the field
of medicine. When he grew up, he refined this science and raised it by trans-
forming it into a high and noble art (just as the Greeks themselves did in actual
fact, particularly in the work of the great fifth-century physician, Hippocrates,
with his medical school at Cos). Asclepius married and had several children,
among them doctors such as Machaon (in the Iliad) and more shadowy figures
such as Hygeia or Hygieia (Health).